AWS services explained in plain English with concepts familiar to developers and compared to Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
AWS services explained in plain English with concepts familiar to developers and compared to Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Some AWS service names are quite cryptic, so I created this table that renames them using terms familiar to developers.
This is a work in progress and I will update it as I learn more about AWS and cloud services in general.
It's good to know types of cloud computing before reading the table below.
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
PaaS (Platform as a Service)
SaaS (Software as a Service)
There are over 200 AWS services, and this list is non-exhaustive. Feel free to add more services or propose alternative names for them. Note: This comparison with Azure/Google Cloud is based on general service capabilities and may not reflect all features or recent changes in each platform. Service equivalents across platforms may have different feature sets or implementation approaches.
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Athena | SQL Query Service | Synapse Analytics | BigQuery | Query data in S3 using SQL without a server |
| Amazon EMR | Big Data Platform | HDInsight | Dataproc | Managed big data platform for processing large datasets. Supports Hadoop, Spark. |
| Amazon Kinesis | Real-time Stream Processing | Azure Stream Analytics | Cloud Dataflow | Process and analyze real-time streaming data like logs, video, etc. Think Kafka. |
| Amazon QuickSight | BI Dashboard | Power BI | Looker | Create and share interactive dashboards and business intelligence reports. Think Tableau. |
| Amazon Redshift | Data Warehouse | Azure Synapse Analytics | BigQuery | Managed petabyte-scale data warehouse for running SQL queries on large datasets. Think Snowflake. |
| AWS Clean Rooms | Data Collaboration | Azure Purview | Dataplex | Securely analyze and collaborate on datasets with partners without sharing raw data |
| AWS Data Pipeline | Data Pipeline | Azure Data Factory | Cloud Composer | Automate transfer of data between AWS services and on-premises data sources |
| AWS Glue | Data ETL | Azure Data Factory | Cloud Dataflow | Extract, transform, and load data from various sources into data lakes/warehouses |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Step Functions | Visual Workflow Builder | Logic Apps | Workflows | Build visual workflows and easily run them |
| Amazon AppFlow | 3rd Party Integrator | Logic Apps | Application Integration | No-code integration service for 3rd party apps like Salesforce, Zendesk |
| Amazon EventBridge | Event Bus | Event Grid | Eventarc | Native solution for routing events between apps and AWS services |
| Amazon MQ | Managed Message Broker | Service Bus | ? | Managed protocol-compliant message broker. Supports Apache ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ |
| Amazon SNS | Pub/Sub Service | Notification Hubs | Pub/Sub | Managed pub/sub messaging for microservices and serverless apps. One-to-many communication |
| Amazon SQS | Message Queue | Service Bus | Cloud Tasks | Managed message queuing service for decoupling microservices. One-to-one communication |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS AppFabric | SaaS Management Platform | Microsoft Entra | BeyondCorp Enterprise | Centralize SaaS application security, user activity monitoring, and access controls |
| Amazon Chime | Video Conferencing | Teams | Google Meet | Enterprise communication service for video/voice calls, chat, and screen sharing. Think Zoom. |
| Amazon Connect | Cloud Contact Center | Dynamics 365 Customer Service | Contact Center AI Platform | Cloud-based contact center service with voice and chat capabilities |
| Amazon Pinpoint | Customer Engagement Service | Azure Communication Services | Firebase Cloud Messaging | Targeted messaging and analytics service for customer engagement |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Cost Explorer | Cost Analysis | Cost Management | Cloud Billing | Analyze and visualize AWS costs and usage data to identify trends and cost-saving opportunities |
| AWS Budgets | Cost Monitoring | Azure Budgets | Cloud Billing | Set custom budgets and receive alerts when costs or usage exceed thresholds |
| AWS Cost and Usage Report | Cost Reporting | Cost Management | Cloud Billing | Generate detailed reports on AWS costs and usage data for custom analysis and forecasting |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon EC2 | Virtual Machine | Virtual Machines | Compute Engine | Virtual machines you can SSH into and do anything |
| Amazon EC2 Image Builder | VM Image Builder | VM Image Builder | Image Builder | Automatically create, test and maintain VM images |
| Amazon Lightsail | Simple VPS | - | - | Easy-to-use VPS with simplified management |
| AWS Batch | Batch Processing | Batch Service | Cloud Batch | Schedule and run thousands of batch computing jobs on Amazon ECS, Fargate, etc. |
| AWS Elastic Beanstalk | App Platform | App Service | App Engine | Platform as a Service - deploy your web apps without any infrastructure management |
| AWS Lambda | Serverless Functions | Functions | Cloud Functions | Functions that run your code without managing servers. Supports multiple languages |
| AWS Outposts | On-Premises Cloud | Azure Stack | Anthos | Run AWS services on on-premises servers |
| AWS Wavelength | 5G Edge Computing | Edge Zones | Mobile Edge Cloud | Run applications at 5G network edge for ultra-low latency |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry) | Container Registry | Azure Container Registry (ACR) | Container Registry | Docker image storage. Think Docker Hub but private |
| Amazon ECS (Elastic Container Service) | Container Orchestration (Native) | Azure Container Apps (ACA) | Cloud Run | Native container orchestration service. Works with EC2 or Fargate for serverless containers |
| Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) | Container Orchestration (Kubernetes) | Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) | Kubernetes Engine (GKE) | Managed Kubernetes service |
| AWS App Runner | Simple Container Apps | Azure Container Apps (ACA) | Cloud Run | Managed container platform for web apps. Deploy code and enjoy load balancing, auto-scaling etc. |
| AWS Fargate | Serverless Containers | Azure Container Instances (ACI) | Cloud Run Jobs | Compute engine (not a standalone service) for running containers in serverless environment |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Aurora | Optimized SQL Database | Azure Database for MySQL/PostgreSQL | Cloud SQL | High-performance managed MySQL/PostgreSQL compatible database |
| Amazon DynamoDB | NoSQL Database (Native) | Cosmos DB | Cloud Firestore/Datastore | Managed NoSQL database optimized for performance, scalability, and low latency |
| Amazon DocumentDB | NoSQL Database (MongoDB) | Cosmos DB (MongoDB API) | MongoDB Atlas on GCP | Document database with MongoDB compatibility |
| Amazon ElastiCache | In-memory Cache | Azure Cache for Redis | Memorystore | In-memory caching service supporting Redis or Memcached |
| Amazon Neptune | Graph Database | Cosmos DB (Gremlin API) | - | Managed graph database service |
| Amazon QLDB | Ledger Database | - | - | Managed ledger database for verifiable history of changes. Think blockchain. |
| Amazon RDS | SQL Database | Azure SQL Database | Cloud SQL | Managed relational databases for multiple engines (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server) |
| Amazon Timestream | Time Series Database | Azure Time Series Insights | - | Managed time series database for time series data |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Cloud9 | Cloud IDE | Azure DevOps Codespaces | Cloud Shell Editor | Browser-based IDE with collaborative coding features |
| AWS CloudShell | Cloud Terminal | Azure Cloud Shell | Cloud Shell | Browser-based shell environment with AWS tools pre-installed |
| AWS CodeArtifact | Artifact Repository | Azure Artifacts | Artifact Registry | Managed artifact repository for software packages |
| AWS CodeBuild | Code Build | Azure Pipelines | Cloud Build | Fully managed build service that compiles code and runs tests |
| AWS CodeCommit (discontinued) | Git Repository | Azure Repos | Cloud Source Repositories | Fully managed source control service using Git |
| AWS CodeDeploy | Code Deploy | Azure DevOps | Cloud Deploy | Automated deployment service to various compute services |
| AWS CodePipeline | CI/CD Pipeline | Azure Pipelines | Cloud Build | Continuous delivery service for fast and reliable updates |
| AWS Fault Injection Service | Chaos Engineering | Azure Chaos Studio | - | Controlled experiment service for testing application resilience |
| AWS Infrastructure Composer | Infrastructure Designer | - | - | Visual designer for AWS infrastructure. Generates IaaC templates (AWS CloudFormation) |
| Amazon Q Developer | AI Copilot | GitHub Copilot | Duet AI | AI-powered coding assistant and documentation helper |
| AWS X-Ray | Distributed Tracing | Application Insights | Cloud Trace | Application trace analysis and debugging service. Useful for microservices |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Amplify | Full-Stack Framework | Static Web Apps | Firebase | Complete solution for building full-stack web & mobile apps |
| AWS AppSync | Serverless API | API Management | - | Service for creating serverless GraphQL API with real-time data synchronization |
| AWS Device Farm | Mobile Testing Service | App Center Test | Firebase Test Lab | Testing service for mobile and web applications on real devices |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Bedrock | LLMs API | Azure OpenAI | Vertex AI | Fully managed service for accessing foundation LLMs (Claude, Llama, etc.) |
| Amazon CodeGuru | Code Review AI | DevOps AI | - | AI-powered code reviews and application performance recommendations |
| Amazon Comprehend | Text Analytics | Text Analytics | Natural Language AI | Natural language processing service for text analysis |
| Amazon Forecast | AI Forecasting | Forecasting | Vertex AI Forecasting | Time series forecasting using machine learning |
| Amazon Kendra | Enterprise Search | Cognitive Search | Enterprise Search | ML-powered intelligent search service for enterprise data. Think Elasticsearch. |
| Amazon Lex | Chatbot Builder | Bot Service | Dialogflow | Build conversational interfaces using voice and text. Think Alexa. |
| Amazon Personalize | Recommendation Engine | Personalizer | Recommendations AI | Real-time personalized recommendations |
| Amazon Polly | Text-to-Speech | Text to Speech | Text-to-Speech | Convert text into lifelike speech |
| Amazon Q | AI Assistant | Copilot | Duet AI | AI-powered assistant for business use cases |
| Amazon Rekognition | Computer Vision AI | Computer Vision | Vision AI | Image and video analysis service |
| Amazon SageMaker | ML Platform | Azure ML | Vertex AI | Complete platform for building, training, and deploying ML models |
| Amazon Textract | Document Analysis | Form Recognizer | Document AI | Extract text and data from documents |
| Amazon Transcribe | Speech-to-Text | Speech to Text | Speech-to-Text | Convert speech to text |
| Amazon Translate | Translator | Translator | Translation AI | Neural machine translation service |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Auto Scaling | Resource Scaler | Autoscale | Autoscaling | Automatically adjust resources across multiple services |
| AWS CloudFormation | Infrastructure as Code | ARM Templates | Cloud Deployment Manager | Define and provision infrastructure using code. Think Terraform. |
| AWS CloudTrail | Activity Logging | Activity Log | Cloud Audit Logs | Track user activity and API usage |
| Amazon CloudWatch | Monitoring & Logs | Monitor | Cloud Monitoring | Infrastructure and application monitoring service |
| AWS Compute Optimizer | Resource Optimization | Advisor | Recommender | Analyze and optimize compute resource usage |
| AWS Control Tower | Multi-Account Manager | Landing Zones | Cloud Asset Inventory | Set up and govern multi-account AWS environment |
| AWS Config | Resource Config Manager | Policy | Asset Inventory | Track and audit configuration of your resources |
| AWS Health Dashboard | Service Status | Service Health | Cloud Status | View status and health of all AWS services |
| AWS Organizations | Organizations Manager | Management Groups | Cloud Resource Manager | Centrally manage multiple AWS accounts as a single organization |
| AWS OpsWorks | Server Config Manager | Automation | Config Management | Servers (EC2 or on-premises) configuration automation using Chef and Puppet |
| AWS Systems Manager | Operations Hub | Automation | Cloud Operations | Infrastructure operations management |
| AWS Trusted Advisor | Advisor | Advisor | Recommender | Analyze environment against best practices |
| AWS Well-Architected Tool | Architecture Reviewer | Well-Architected Review | Cloud Architecture Center | Review and improve your architectures |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Application Discovery Service | Server Discovery Scanner | Azure Migrate | Cloud Asset Inventory | Scan and catalog on-premises servers for migration planning |
| AWS Application Migration Service | App Migration | Azure Migrate | Cloud Migration | Automate migration of applications to AWS |
| AWS Database Migration Service | Database Migration | Database Migration Service | Database Migration Service | Migrate databases with minimal downtime |
| AWS Migration Hub | Migration Dashboard | Azure Migrate | Migration Center | Central dashboard to track migration progress |
| AWS Snow Family | Physical Data Transfer | Data Box | Transfer Appliance | Physical devices for moving large amounts of data |
| AWS DataSync | Data Transfer Service | Azure File Sync | Storage Transfer Service | Automate data transfer between on-premises and AWS |
| AWS Transfer Family | FTP Service | Azure Files | - | Managed SFTP, FTPS, and FTP service |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon API Gateway | API Gateway | API Management | Cloud Endpoints/API Gateway | Create, publish, and manage APIs |
| Amazon CloudFront | CDN | Content Delivery Network | Cloud CDN | Global content delivery network |
| Amazon Route 53 | DNS | DNS | Cloud DNS | Domain registration and DNS routing |
| Amazon VPC | Virtual Network | Virtual Network | Virtual Private Cloud | Isolated cloud network. Think VLAN. |
| AWS App Mesh | Service Mesh | Service Fabric Mesh | Traffic Director | Application-level networking for microservices. Monitor, trace, log, and control traffic. |
| AWS Cloud Map | Service Discovery | Service Fabric | Service Directory | Service discovery for cloud resources |
| AWS Direct Connect | Dedicated Connection | ExpressRoute | Cloud Interconnect | Dedicated physical network connection to AWS |
| AWS Global Accelerator | Traffic Optimizer | Front Door | Premium Network Tier | Improve global application availability |
| AWS PrivateLink | Private Endpoint | Private Link | Private Service Connect | Connect services across different AWS accounts and VPCs without exposing traffic to the public internet |
| AWS Transit Gateway | Virtual WAN | Virtual WAN | Network Connectivity Center | Connect VPCs and on-premises networks through a central hub. Like a Virtual WAN. |
| AWS VPN | VPN Service | VPN Gateway | Cloud VPN | Secure network connectivity between on-premises and AWS |
| Elastic Load Balancing | Load Balancer | Load Balancer | Cloud Load Balancing | Distribute incoming traffic |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon Cognito | User Authentication | Azure AD B2C | Firebase Auth | Managed user authentication. No need to build your own auth system. |
| Amazon Detective | Security Investigation | Sentinel | Security Command Center | INVESTIGATOR - investigates security incidents to find the root cause (e.g. compromised accounts) |
| Amazon GuardDuty | Threat Watchdog | Security Center | Security Command Center | WATCHDOG - continuously monitors for malicious activity (e.g. unusual API calls) |
| Amazon Inspector | Security Scanner | Defender for Cloud | Security Scanner | SCANNER - runs security assessments (e.g. scans for open ports) |
| Amazon Macie | Data Security Scanner | Purview | Data Loss Prevention | Discover and protect sensitive data (e.g. personal information) |
| AWS Artifact | Compliance Reports | Service Trust Portal | Compliance Reports Manager | Access AWS security and compliance documents (e.g. ISO certifications) |
| AWS Audit Manager | Compliance Audit | Purview | Security Command Center | Continuous compliance auditing |
| AWS Certificate Manager | SSL Certificate Manager | App Service Certificates | Certificate Authority Service | Provision and manage SSL/TLS certificates. Think Let's Encrypt. |
| AWS CloudHSM | Hardware Security Module | Dedicated HSM | Cloud HSM | Hardware-based key storage so you can manage your own encryption keys |
| AWS Directory Service | Active Directory | Active Directory DS | Managed Service for Microsoft AD | Managed Microsoft Active Directory |
| AWS Firewall Manager | Central Firewall Manager | Azure Firewall Manager | Cloud Armor | Centrally manage firewall rules |
| AWS Identity and Access Management | IAM | Azure AD | Cloud IAM | Manage access to AWS services |
| AWS Key Management Service | Encryption Key Manager | Key Vault | Cloud KMS | Manage encryption keys |
| AWS Secrets Manager | Secrets Manager | Key Vault | Secret Manager | Store and rotate secrets |
| AWS Security Hub | Security Dashboard | Security Center | Security Command Center | Central security dashboard |
| AWS Shield | DDoS Protection | DDoS Protection | Cloud Armor | DDoS protection service |
| AWS IAM Identity Center | Single Sign-On | Azure AD | Cloud Identity | Single sign-on service to access multiple accounts |
| AWS WAF | Web Application Firewall | WAF | Cloud Armor | Filter malicious web (so it's application layer) traffic (e.g. SQL injection) |
| AWS Name | Better Name | Azure equivalent | Google Cloud equivalent | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS Backup | Backup | Backup | Backup and DR Service | Centralized backup management |
| Amazon Elastic Block Store | Block Storage | Managed Disks | Persistent Disk | Block-level storage volumes attached to EC2 instances |
| AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery | Disaster Recovery | Site Recovery | Backup and DR Service | Disaster recovery service |
| Amazon Elastic File System | Network File System | Files | Filestore | Scalable NFS file storage |
| Amazon FSx for Lustre | HPC File System | HPC Storage | Filestore | High-performance file system |
| Amazon FSx for Windows File Server | Windows File System | Files | Filestore | Managed Windows file storage |
| Amazon Simple Storage Service | Object Storage | Blob Storage | Cloud Storage | Scalable object storage service. Think Dropbox. |
| AWS Storage Gateway | Hybrid Storage | StorSimple | Storage Transfer Service | Send data to AWS from on-premises storage for example as a backup |